Monday, August 26, 2013

I am going to take a week off to reve up my engines. A few odd pieces might pop up, and Evan Lewis will be doing the Forgotten Books on Friday. I feel of in need of a break, but there is no health issues to concern me.

I leaned heavily on Dr. Robin Boyle to give me a positive piece for my blog. He kindly allowed me to publish this one. Dr. Boyle came to the US from Glasgow, another challenged urban area.

Robin Boyle is Professor of Urban Planning and Chair of the Department of Urban
Studies and Planning (DUSP), Wayne State University (WSU) in Detroit, Michigan.

Active in professional organizations, he is co-chair of the Detroit chapter of the Urban
Land Institute [ULI] and serves on the board of the Michigan Suburbs Alliance. In 2004
he was nominated to the Planning Board for the City of Birmingham, Mi., becoming
chair in 2006.
Research interests include (1) planning and design for an aging society, (2)
investment patterns in residential and retail development, (3) the issue of vacant land in
central cities. This work led to securing funding from the Land Policy Program at MSU
and to collaboration with the Michigan Suburbs Alliance (MSA) and in particular their
successful Redevelopment Ready Communities initiative.

THE POSSIBILITY OF DETROIT FUTURE CITY

Introduced by Detroit Mayor Dave Bing in the fall of 2010,
the Detroit Works Project was
conceived “as a process to create a shared, achievable vision for our future
that would serve as a guide to help improve the physical, social and economic
landscape of our city”. Largely funded by the foundation community, notably the
Kresge Foundation of Troy, Michigan, the initial project was led by a NYC
architect, Ms. Toni Griffin, whose task was, with a local firm of architects
and designers (led by Dan Kinkead of Hamilton Anderson Associates), to manage a
multi-national team of planning and design consultants, including world-renown Skidmore,
Owings and Merrill. In July of 2011 Mayor Dave Bing introduced the Short Term Actions
strategy of the Detroit Works Project and announced the separation of the
project into two tracks—Short Term Actions and Long Term
Planning. This Long Term Planning project eventually morphed
into Detroit Future City, published
at the beginning of 2013.

But first, some largely forgotten planning history.

In 1970, the third volume of the
1965-1970 Detroit Plan was released
with the sub-heading: “A Concept for Future Development”. This study/plan, embracing 23,000 square
miles of southeastern Michigan, with Detroit as its central city, became the
road map for the region and for a generation. “Build-out” across the suburbs,
with new community development spreading from Toledo to the Thumb of Michigan,
from Windsor in Canada all the way to Jackson and beyond, became the de facto development pattern for the
region. This grand plan for Detroit’s metropolitan region never achieved its
lofty goals or ambitious targets but it did drive sprawl across the burgeoning
suburban landscape. And despite some fine ideas in the plan, it did precious
little to stem the loss of business, jobs and people from Detroit. In contrast, I contend that the Detroit Plan
played a critical role in the hollowing out of the city.

As if you need reminding, the
population in the city of Detroit in 1970 was measured at 1,670,114; by 2010
the Census recorded 713,777 residents in the city, a loss of 58 percent over 40
years.

Forty-three years after the conclusion of the Detroit Plan, Detroit Future City brought to the
public, to business and community leaders, and to government planners a wholly
different trajectory for Detroit. Using its full and more useful title: Detroit Future City – Detroit Strategic
Framework Plan this is, in my opinion, the most comprehensive, most engaged
and most relevant plan I have seen in the past quarter century in any city in
America’s troubled heartland. It embraces the structural economic shocks that
have and continue to disrupt whole communities once predicated on making things.
It lays bare the reality of spatial segregation – by class, color and
community. It doesn’t hide from the community impact of poverty, of
joblessness, of abandonment, of emptiness across too much of Detroit.

Then it turns to find possibility in this the most
devastated of the rust-belt cities. To draw from the Plan’s Executive Summary,
this possibility can be found not merely in terms of location on the Detroit
River, or available land or its institutional bones but in the “resiliency,
creativity, and ingenuity of its people and organizations–the city’s human and
social capital”.

The content of the Plan is similarly broad-based and
impressive. The survey, analysis and prescription that are found in the Plan’s
Five Elements are interconnected, sophisticated, nuanced and perhaps most
importantly, useful. The Plan skillfully
incorporates recommendations that are grounded in the possibilities of the city
and its residents but also reflective and inclusive of some of the most
advanced ideas in land use planning and redesign. And it doesn’t end with
simply a catalogue of transformative ideas. It looks deep in the weeds of
ownership, of management and of coordination. It forces the reader to address
the imperatives for public action and the impact that action can have on the
city and its future.

And finally, this Plan began with a commitment to civic
engagement, to genuine and authentic participation from all peoples and parts
of Detroit. Despite some huge challenges and an often-toxic political and
fiscal environment, the people that made Detroit
Future City stayed the course, developing the plan and its recommendations
in the full glare of public scrutiny and with almost endless community
involvement.

The challenge, now, is moving forward with implementation and
real change. The Kresge Foundation and others have committed to this process,
with Dan Kinkead and Heidi Alcock (shifting recently from Community Legal
Resources) leading a new nonprofit agency with just this charge. But they face
a Herculean task, made all the difficult by the fragility of the region’s
economy, the depth of underinvestment-private and public-in the city and the
dark clouds of insolvency hanging over the city, its workers, residents and
investors.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

David Cranmer is slowly publishing the poems of his nephew, Kyle, who died a few months ago.

Let me share just one here--I hope you will consider buying the collection because the money made will go to his family and his college. The book is available on David's blog and will soon appear on Amazon. This is a young man who had so much to offer, so much to say. Listen to him.

Friday, August 23, 2013

I haven't posted one of these in a while but decided to give one a try. This time the prompt comes from a headline from 1913 in a Detroit paperMICHIGAN MAN'S TASTES GET HIM INTO TROUBLE. I have no idea what the story was about because the print is so tiny. And I don't want to know, nor should you. Make it your own story. Feel free to change Michigan to whatever state or place you want. In fact, I suggest it. Maybe the places will factor in heavily. So the title of every story will be the same except for the place.The locales can make it zing. The story should be 1000 words or less. If you have a blog, I will post the link. If not, I will post the story. Fall is a busy time so let's make the end date Sept 26th.

Let me know if you plan on writing a story and let me know again before the date. Please don't post it ahead of time if possible. I know some of you can write a story a lot faster than the rest of us, but it's more fun if they all get "birthed" the same day. Are you in?

This is one of Simenon’s standalones, which I generally prefer to the more formulaic Maigrets. A French family lives comfortably, if claustrophobically, outside of town. The first person narrator is twenty-one and works at the local hospital as a research assistant. She’s having a rather prosaic affair with her employer, an older scientist. Her younger brother is taking classes at the local college, majoring in chemistry.

The two siblings live with their parents in a state of constant tension. The mother is an alcoholic, and goes on binges that the rest of the family calls ‘novenas’. Her behavior seems to date from the beginning of her marriage and has almost a formal structure to it. The tension of her behavior is palpable throughout the story.

A newly hired maid, a sexually obliging sort of girl, Manuela from Spain, brings some needed air into this hothouse. Both father and son begin sleeping with her. Neither is satisfied with this arrangement.

When Manuela disappears. it is unclear what has happened and the ambiguity will either intrigue or annoy you. The ending is surprising, yet fitting. This was not my favorite Simenon and yet it succeeded in keeping my interest. Short novels stand a better chance of doing that.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

How long do you stick with a book? With me, it varies. Sometimes I know in a page or two. The voice or writing style just puts me off. I have also put a book aside 40 pages before the end. I recently read that you should give a book 100 pages minus your age. I guess the older you are, the less time you have left to read so don't tie yourself up with a book you don't like. Do you have a rule?

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

I am delighted to be included in this volume of 90 flash fiction stories. I find myself among some
sterling company. I thank Mr. Penzler for including me.

Entire novels are often written about a
single crime, detailing every gruesome, dark detail until the last drop
of blood spatters across the page. Yet in this mystery anthology,
renowned editor and author Otto Penzler weaves together to
heart-stopping effect more than ninety tales of brutality, terror, and
unexpected demise, with each story told in a swift one thousand words or
less.
These crimes may be fast in both form and fallout, but
none lack the dark impulses that too often guide human hands to ill
ends. Prepare to be transported into the diabolical schemes of criminal
masterminds…into robberies and pranks gone horribly awry…into closets
crammed with skeletons…into families bound not by love but wickedness.
Authors
include Peter Blauner, Ken Bruen, Rob W. Hart, K. A. Laity, Tasha
Alexander, Patricia Abbott, Bruce DeSilva, Chuck Caruso, Gregory Gibson,
Joe R. Lansdale, and many more.

Here is the interview Megan did with him for the LA TIMES a few years back. Glad we did our Elmore Leonard day recently. I saw him several times over the last year and he never lost his zest for life although he'd grown fragile. Amazing writer.

Can any Al Pacino movie really be forgotten? I think this--his first--is a bit.
Almost scary enough to be a cautionary tale. Pacino and Winn play two lovers who get caught up in heroin addiction in New York in the early seventies. Pacino went from this to the THE GODFATHER. A highly realistic film, so seldom done now. Seventies movies always rock for me. Winn went on to obscurity.

Phil really enjoyed THE EX-PATS by Chris Pavone, A CORPSE IN KORYO by James Church-both crime novels. He also liked THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON by Adam Johnson and YELLOW BIRD by Kevin Powers, which he thought to be the best book he had read in years.

He is now reading THE FORGIVEN by Lawrence Osborn.

What books are being read by your spouse/kids/friends? Do you discuss books with them? Is their much overlap? Phil and I have very little overlap but I usually know what books he will like if I read a review. We also tend to like the same books as a couple we know so we can pass books and recommendations back and forth. Do your real life friends read similarly to you or just your online pals?

P.S. Asked my son this question at dinner and Josh chose MIDDLESEX and THE MARRIAGE PLOT (Eugenides), and the STEVE JOBS biography as his three most recent reads.

Although Bernadette is going to post this question on her own blog, I thought we might have some suggestions for her here too. A few days ago, she wrote she was not familiar with American crime fiction writers and the ones she had tried (Cain, Chandler, Lehane, Connelly) were not for her.

I don't really expect you to deduce from all of that the perfect American bloke for me to start reading but you've prompted me to write my own post about this subject.

Who would you recommend for Bernadette based on this list? I have to admit these writers are not exactly like US writers, are they? I have read the first three and
seem to reflect on their society in their books.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

BE MY BABY (The Ronettes) reminds of the first boy I came as close as a fifteen-sixteen year old can come to loving.

The second one is WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? (Supremes). I was sixteen also and newly finished with that boy. I had a summer job working as a waitress in a resort town. That song blared from every car radio that summer. It epitomized the end of that going nowhere relationship and the beginning of being on my own. Of course, another n'er do well boy came along...

I wonder if most songs you love as a teenager do this. What about you?

I often find it interesting to see which writers shows up on here often and who doesn't. I fully expected to see Nicholas Freeling, Sjowal and Wahloo, Sayers, Marsh, Tey, Ross Macdonald, Colin Dexter, P.D. James, Peter Dickinson, Tony Hillerman, Ruth Rendell, Sara Paretsky, Margaret Maron, Michael Connelly, etc. to turn up here week after week, and yet they are rarely represented. Perhaps they are not forgotten enough. Or mostly read by women when most of the reviewers here are men. I am not sure. But if I had to list my top ten crime fiction writers, Nicholas Freeling would be on the list. And one of my favorite of his novels was GUN BEFORE BUTTER.GUN BEFORE BUTTER concerns the fabulous Lucienne Englebert who plagues, delights, and captures Van Der Valk's attention over the years. Gun Before Butter, Freeling’s third novel, centers around dual identity and commodity smuggling in the European market. It is almost as much a romance as a crime fiction story. Its heroine, Lucienne, is a free spirit, similar in many ways to Van der Valk, who finds the straitlaced Dutch inhibiting. She is put away by him for a minor crime and when released goes on a spending spree across Europe. There is a recurring motif from Shakespeare, a lot of drinking and the high life, and a May-December romance with a tragic outcome, as well as an overview of 1960s Amsterdam and the people who inhabited it. I am less fond of the Henri Castang novels set in Paris than these earlier (11) Van der Valk ones. But to me he is an essential crime fiction writer. Much heralded in his lifetime, I wonder if he is mostly forgotten now, ten years after his death. Sergio Angelini, SHOTGUN, Ed McBainJoe Barone, NOW MAY YOU WEEP, Deborah CrombieBrian Busby, TORCH OF VIOLENCE, Gerald LaingBill Crider, STRANGER AT HOME, George Sanders (Leigh Brackett)Scott Cupp, STALKING THE ZOMBIE, Mike ResnickMartin Edwards, KEEP IT QUIET, Richard HullJerry House, THE KILLER, Chris North (Ed Gorman)Randy Johnson, THE SPUR: Loki's Rock Mark EllisNick Jones, GOLD COAST, Elmore LeonardGeorge Kelley, THE LEGION OF SPACE, Jack WilliamsonB.V. Lawson, THE PLOT THICKENS, Mary Higgins ClarkEvan Lewis, DAN TURNER: HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE in Veiled LadySteve Lewis, COUNTRY AND FATAL, George BagbyTodd Mason, LAUGHING MATTERS, Gene ShalitJ.F. Norris, THE EIGHTH SQUARE, Herbert LiebermanJuri Nummelin, THE VAMPIRE AFFAIR, Livia ReasonerJames Reasoner, SPY KILLER, L. Ron HubbardKelly Robinson, IRONSIDE, Jim ThompsonRichard Robinson, BLOODHOUNDS, Peter LoveseyGerard Saylor, ODD AND THE FROST GIANTS, Neil GaimanRon Scheer, SNAKE EYES, Jory ShermanMichael Slind, REBECCA'S PRIDE, Donald McNutt DouglassKevin Tipple, THE GREAL MERLINI, Clayton RawsonTomCat, THE CAVALIER'S CUP, Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr)

Thursday, August 15, 2013

For me, Denise Mina. She wins all the awards (Old Theakston the last two years)

and I keep meaning to read her. Have even started one or two of her early books and found them a bit hard to get into. I do not persevere much, demanding immediate accessibility to the world of the book.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

As I am watching the final days of DEXTER and BREAKING BAD, I badly want to see BB again from the beginning. I have no desire to rewatch Dexter though. Part of it was that what you saw in the beginning was what you got at the end with DEXTER. There was no evolution of character for me. And each season basically did the same thing. It did it well but sort of statically.

I would rewatch THE WIRE but not THE SOPRANOS. I would rewatch SIX FEET UNDER but not THE GOOD WIFE.

What series that you enjoyed would you watch again? Which one would you not?

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Funny how forgotten this is movie is. All of the players have either fallen out of favor or fallen off the earth. But at the time, it was a fun movie. And wasn't Chevy handsome? I'd forgotten that.

Written and Directed by Colin Higgins, FOUL PLAY debuted in 1978. A librarian and a police detective fall in love as they work together to solve a case involving all sorts of wacky characters. It begins when Hawn is persauded to get out more after her divorce and she chooses the wrong party to attend.

This was a sort of tribute to both screwball comedies and Alfred Hitchcock's pairing of a couple to solve a mystery. Dudley Moore was cast at the last minute and his performance led to his casting in TEN.

Both leads had a nice string of successful movies in the seventies and eighties and then age caught up with them, I guess.

Friday, August 09, 2013

FOR MORE LINKS, PLEASE SEE B.V. LAWSON right here. We are joined by a new reviewer this week, Kelly Robinson, so please say hi to her.

If you would like to read some tributes to Jack Vance who died this year, you can find them here.

J

Jack Vance, The Last
Castle (1966) Winner 1967 Nebula and Hugo Awards for best short novel, Patti Abbott

I am a complete novice not only to Vance but to fantasy
fiction in general. The Last Castle has some general resemblances to Game of Thrones (my only anchor). There
are castles, political intrigue, and in place of dragons, sentient birds. Roughly,
the narrative centers around a civilization of Earth people who live in
clusters of walled castles. They live opulent lives supported by high
technology.

The capital is Castle Hagedon. Surrounding these structures are
peasants imported from other planets, Nomads who prey on them and are
intermittently defended by the castle folk, and “expiationists” (an extreme
back-to-earth group apparently émigrés from the castles. The society is run by
another imported group, the Meks, whose digestive systems have been replaced by
sacs filled with syrup by the ruling class. The Meks repair and maintain the
infrastructure until one day they rebel. Like all ruling classes, these people
are shocked by the sudden and unexpected
violence. Were not the Meks well treated? How could they have the capability to
create an army? An interview with a captured Mek offers a subtle exploration of
the attitudes of the oppressors and oppressed. The Castle Hagedon falls. The
Meks take over the planet.The Last Castle is an intriguing
examination of the mentality of colonists and the oppressed, not unlike what
has occurred in Algeria, South Africa, and other imperial outposts.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad series as well as many westerns, anthologies, short stories and other crime fiction novels. You can find him here.

The Vengeful Virigin, Gil BrewerF. Scott Fitzgerald once noted that Hemingway (then at his peak) wrotewith the authority of success while Fitzgerald (then in the dumps)wrote with the authority of failure.

The authority of failure is what animates virtually all of Gil Brewer'swork and certainly The Vengeful Virgin is no exception. In outlineit's nothing new--a very James M. Cainian scenario in which a TVrepairman gets involved with an eighteen year old temptress who istaking care of a dying old man (and one we don't take to at all). He'spromised to leave her a fortune when he dies. The trouble is he's dyingvery slowly. It won't surprise you that the temptress has thoughts ofinviting the Reaper in a little ahead of schedule.What makes this one of Gil Brewer's most successful novels is that acouple of the plot turns are truly shocking and that he is in completecontrol of his material. He paces this one well right up to the end.And the end is a powerhouse.I mentioned the authority of failure. In Brewer's case it's usuallybecause his protagonists let their dissatisfaction with their lotbecome a kind of self-pity that lets them justify whatever they need todo to improve their lot. They generally learn too late that maybe theold TV repair gig wasn't so bad at all.Contrast this attitude with the reckless but doomed romantics ofCharles Williams (whom I prefer). They're smarter than Brewer's men andthere's rarely any self-pity. They seem to be on some kind of quest,which is a twist on the Cain-style tale. Yes they meet a bad girl. Yesthey do something stupid. But what gets them through is enormous energyand a sense of mission and an undertow of anger. They're like Brewer'smen, too, failures. But they are the tarnished knights that PhillipMarlowe and all his imitators only pretended to be.

About Me

Patricia Abbott is the author of more than 125 stories that have appeared online, in print journals and in various anthologies. She is the author of two print novels CONCRETE ANGEL (2015) and SHOT IN DETROIT (2016)(Polis Books). CONCRETE ANGEL was nominated for an Anthony and Macavity Award in 2016. SHOT IN DETROIT was nominated for an Edgar Award and an Anthony Award in 2017. A collection of her stories I BRING SORROW AND OTHER STORIES OF TRANSGRESSION will appear in 2018.